


Well met

by LindaMaceMichalik



Series: Well met [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 01:40:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17798690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindaMaceMichalik/pseuds/LindaMaceMichalik
Summary: "So, an angel apiece, thwarted love, contorted family backgrounds.     Tell me, Ralph" Oliver swept  his hand around the room, " why do you think we're here?"





	Well met

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer - the characters from Mary Renault's Charioteer and Andre Aciman's Call me by your name do not belong to me and I make no profit from using them in an alternative universe.  
> ============

[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Two-pints-beer-main.jpg)

The two tall, blue-eyed blondes set their pints of bitter down onto the rickety table and settled into a corner of the nondescript bar, or was it a pub? Was the beer-sticky stained round table between them, the threadbare fabric clad benches they both sat back into in Bristol or Boston? For that matter, which decade was it - highly relevant with respect to both the legality of their shared predilections and with respect to their own histories?

Ralph was the first to speak, elegant, received-English vowels emerging from the mouth of a donkey-jacketed merchant seaman, cap upturned on the grimy bar table.  
"So a professor of Greek philosophy. Plato?"

"Heraclitus and the pre-Socratics, but of course Plato! I guess you've read the Phaedrus?"

Ralph smiled across at Oliver and raised an eyebrow, it was the accepted standard text for their kind of loving, Greek love. Which Ivy league university had the Adonis attended? He reckoned Oliver to be in his mid twenties, as was he. He wondered idly if he was strictly monogamous, scratch that, he intended to be, in hopes of Spud, so Oliver's preferences were irrelevant.  
"But of course! Should be mandatory reading at any good Public school, Greek translation and Pastoral care in one!"

"Public school? Private school maybe." was Oliver's prompt response, thinking over the inner city jungles that educated the masses, those less fortunate than himself, with his elite, preppy education that his frigid, moneyed family had been able to provide; that he'd sold his soul to keep.

Ralph leaned towards the Colonial and smiled again, this was too easy. "If you Yanks insist on corrupting the English language then at least have the decency to provide a glossary. My public, your private! "

Oliver's poker face slid into place. "Really? You want to quibble over semantics - you say tom-ah-toe, I say tom-aye-toe? Surely we're here for more than that?"

"You tell me then sweetheart" Ralph gestured around the empty room, velvet silence, temperate, dust motes dancing in a stream of mid-afternoon sunlight tainted by the panes of Victorian stained glass. England then. "I've not much of a recollection of why or even how I got here."

Oliver's right lip quirked. He liked the guy, reminded him of someone. He tugged on Billowy, tucking it into his brown pants. Shouldn't somebody else have possession of this blue, button-up shirt?.  
"Actually, I was hoping you might know. I suspect I'm here after too much alcohol - mourning the one I left behind."

Ralph nodded "Or, as in my case, the one I never won in the first place?" He was at ease, no rush; it was easy talking with the Yank. It helped to be able to look him straight in the eye, to talk with someone with the same handicap of being well over six foot tall. Did he have to curl in on himself in bed; was he always the outside spoon? A memory intruded - soft hair on his face, his warmed belly against a slight back, a dying fire lighting up a coppery head. He took a quick breath.

The professor kindly ignored Ralph's ghosts. He had ghosts of his own.  
"Same ache, wouldn't you say? My loss, your unfulfilled desire. I'll tell you about mine if you'll tell me about yours. My names Oliver, by the way." He offered his hand to Ralph who took and shook it.

"Ralph - the English way if you don't mind 'Ray-f - and my boy is an Angel, broken wings, but unbroken in spirit!"

"I guess I could say the same about Elio. At least, I hope I've not broken his spirit. He's embedded in a formidably loving family so I suspect they'll not let him fall."

"Unlike you" offered Ralph.

"Unlike us, maybe?" returned Oliver. "You have the look of Atlas about you."

They smiled at each other, they were both Atlases, in looks and in stoicism. If it needed carrying, it had to be them that hoisted the world onto their shoulders, no parental safety net expected.

"Does he have a name?" Oliver sensed another old soul, wounded from childhood.

"Spud, sorry Laurie. We met at school, high school you would say, old names die hard. He prefers Laurie, so of course I try and do what he wants."

"So, an angel apiece, thwarted love, contorted family backgrounds. Tell me, Ralph" Oliver swept his hand around the room, " why do you think we're here?"

====


End file.
